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Month: November 2012

Hacktivism is a word you see surfacing a lot in the news lately. You must have been living on Mars if you did not heard once about Anonymous. What is this new movement ? Why are they doing this ? Is this legal , or just ethical justified ?

Hacktivism

Hacktivism is the use of computers and computer networks as a means of protest to promote political ends.

This is the definition for hacktivism according to Wikipedia. Hacktivist use their knowledge about computer technology and cybersecurity to fight for an idea. They feel an authority is treating them unfair. Anonymous , the example for hacktivism, fights for the right on information freedom, a more equal division of money. These are considered their main fighting cause.

Some say, information freedom is dangerous. For example : the Wikileaks documents are considered a threat for the soldiers still fighting in the war-zones : Iraq, Afghanistan, … True , some information can be dangerous and are not for terrorist eyes to be seen. But, it is a price you pay as a government for decades of cover-up operations. How can people trust their governments , if they are not honest towards their people.

A lot of people do not know what soldiers are doing in those foreign war countries, murdering innocent people. A couple of graphical hints :

Ethics

Is this legal ? No, this is not legal. Most information is obtained by breaking into secured computer systems. Is this ethical justified ? Well, this question should be answered by everybody individual.

After Mastercard, Visa , Paypal closed all accounts owned by Wikileaks, Anonymous stood up. They found it was not ethical justified to cut the funds Wikileaks has the right to receive. The result : Anonymous put up an incredible big offensive. They gathered with over 4000 anons, sympathisants,.. to DDOS the servers of these company’s. This resulted in the sites not being accessible ranging from a couple of hours to 1-2 days. I see this as a cyber sit-in. When you protest on the streets you can deny access to a building by sitting with a whole group of people in front of the entrance. DDOS does exactly the same, only it’s over the internet. The servers are flooded with requests until they shut down and need to be reset. No information is being leaked in the process, nor damage other than economical damage is being made.

It’s a personal question wether or not you find it ethical justified to use cyber force to fight for a cause. Share your thoughts in the comments below.. keep it friendly and clean 🙂